Why Is Our Insulated Canister Eco Exceptional?

Thermal Performance & Circular Design Are Best In Class

Since ECOlunchbox's founding in 2008, we've changed how traveled food is stored and enjoyed with our innovative plastic-free food containers and lunchware. Our exciting new Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister is the latest in a long line of products offering exceptional durability and performance.

Our ECOlunchbox community has been asking us for years to develop a high-performance thermal container or a canister to keep food warm that's plastic-free.

Our mission? Creating unique eco-friendly containers or insulated food canisters for a superior user experience that are fully recyclable and biodegradable at the end of life.

The solution? We are so excited to announce that we are finally launching our latest ECOlunchbox creation: the Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister!

The 12-ounce Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister is best in class for many reasons we can't wait to share with you! For starters, our thermal testing shows the Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister outperforms competitive vacuum-insulated containers by keeping food hot or cold for 8+ hours!

Our ECOlunchbox "circular design" philosophy ensures our products are healthy for people and our planet from the first time you pack a family picnic to the beach until it's time to recycle and biodegrade.

Our Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister features many other clever features and benefits we know will change how you enjoy food on the go!

• Unbeatable Thermal Performance Sans Plastic
• Circular AKA Cradle to Cradle Design Philosophy
• Wide Mouth Is Great for Spoons or Sipping
• Clever Pull Tab to Release Temperature Suction Easily
• Easy To Clean Hygienic Silicone Gasket
• Tare Weight Enable Food Bar Purchases By Weight

Unbeatable Thermal Performance Sans Plastic

At ECOlunchbox, if the product isn’t plastic-free and non-toxic, we won’t sell it. It also has to be a great product with fabulous features our savvy community will love. We know you’ll be impressed by our Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister.

Our new vacuum-insulated container will keep food hot or cold for 8+ hours! We heat tested this new product, and our results show the Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister outperforms competitive conventional brands - even though we have not used any plastic! If you take a quick look at traditional thermos designs, you’ll find that the base of the container and the lid often contain molded plastic parts, like plastic screw-top threading. Since plastics are poor heat conductors, conventional brands commonly use them to reduce heat loss in thermal containers.

We stand by our commitment to health and the environment by eliminating plastic in our products with an innovative design that insulates with vacuum technology and wood. The performance of ECOlunchbox’s insulated container is not only more eco-friendly, but it also performs measurably better than insulated canisters using molded plastic.

Circular AKA Cradle to Cradle Design Philosophy

Since our founding in 2008 by California eco-mom Sandra Ann Harris, we've persisted in our mission to help people say goodbye to plastic at lunchtime for health and the environment by dreaming up alternatives that can outshine the competition WHILE protecting the planet and the people we love. We educate, inspire, and empower our community to go plastic-free and make a measurably positive planet impact through our marketing and responsibly made food containers!

When we set out to design an insulated canister at ECOlunchbox, our goal was to create a first-of-its-kind fabulous container that our community could use joyfully for a long time and then recycle and biodegrade mindfully at the end of life. ECOlunchbox's "circular" or "cradle to cradle" approach to designing products like our new Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister solves for health and environmental impacts at every stage of the product's lifecycle -- from inception to disposal.

Molded thermos container lids are overwhelmingly made with plastic (a cheap insulating material) combined with steel. Plastic thermos lids and bases even appear in products advertised as featuring non-toxic stainless steel! Even lids with steel on the outside usually have plastic threading, and the top of the container base has more molded plastic to receive the lid. All this plastic combined with steel means that these conventional mixed material products are generally thrown in the landfill instead of recycled at the end of life. That's not okay with us, and we know we can do better for our planet and our loved ones because we've done it!

With our Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister, there's no molded plastic of any kind in the design. Our steel lid threading is practical and eco-friendly. Each material used in the product easily separates for recycling! The steel base is 100% recyclable.

The etched bamboo lid, which features wood insulation instead of molded plastic, can be removed with a flat head screwdriver and composted at home or commercially. (Note: many recyclers won't even require removing the bamboo lid topper since it's a biodegradable part.) The silicone gasket can be mailed back to ECOlunchbox for recycling or turned in at a regional recycling depot that accepts silicone.

Nothing goes into the landfill.

Our sister company CircularWare can help your business or organization move away from plastic waste. To learn more about what we can do for you, please visit the CircularWare website.

Wide Mouth Is Great for Spoons or Sipping

We think you'll love the canister's smooth 4-inch wide opening that makes scooping hot entrees, like soups and stews, so easy and pleasant. Competing containers typically have a narrower mouth, making it challenging to dig vertically with a soup spoon, but our Blue Water Bento Insulated Container readily accepts utensils.

Another great feature is the canister's rounded and smooth top lip, which makes the canister ideal for sipping savory and sweet liquids -- whether it's a cream soup, miso, or foamy cappuccinos! Competing containers often have bumpy plastic threading around the container's top edge, making them unsuitable for sipping.

Have you ever had trouble opening a thermal water bottle or food container? We have! When you store hot food and try to open it several hours later, it’s sealed shut. The liquid or food inside has cooled enough to create a temperature differential and resulting suction that makes opening impossible.

Clever Pull Tab to Release Temperature Suction Easily

Worry no more that you or your child will get stuck with an unopenable, suction-sealed container. ECOlunchbox has designed a unique pull-tab loop on the green silicone gasket to break suction seals easily and unscrew the lid. Pull the tab, and you’ll hear a little “whoosh” as the suction seal breaks, and the container opens with ease.

ECOlunchbox means your lunch is ready how you want it when you want it.

Easy To Clean Hygienic Silicone Gasket

We've all fought with insulated containers in the past, trying to keep them clean. If you can't keep them clean, that means you replace them more often. Have you ever thrown away a thermos because you can't clean the mildew and gunk that builds up around the lid gasket?

Designing a container that could be easy to clean for long-time use was a top priority for our ECOlunchbox design team. We were determined to avoid copying conventional designs that tuck a gasket up in a groove of the lid past plastic threading used to screw the container closed. Mildew and food bits accumulate in these hard-to-clean areas, making most containers challenging to maintain for safe, extended use.

Check out our external gasket design, which serves two-fold purposes: easy cleaning and suction release! Our external silicone gasket can be hygienically cleaned easily in place or rolled off. Conventional gaskets often end up wedged inside lid grooves, making them difficult to remove for cleaning and often ruin the seal, forcing you to replace it sooner than you'd prefer.

You shouldn't have to compromise when it comes to cleanliness and food prep!

Tare Weight Enable Food Bar Purchases By Weight

We’ve etched the tare weight of our Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister so you can use it to buy hot food at prepared food bars. That way, the cashier can back out the weight of the container and charge only for the food you’ve purchased. Say goodbye to disposable takeout containers!

Complete List of Blue Water Bento Insulated Canister Features and Benefits

• 100% plastic-free, vacuum-insulated container keeps food hot or cold for 8+ hours.
• Made from 18/8 grade 304 stainless steel and bamboo.
• Total capacity 12 oz (1 ½ cups, 355 ml).
• Cradle-to-cradle design with fully recyclable (base and lid) and compostable (lid).
• Wide mouth opening is ideal for both eating with a utensil or sipping.
• The canister measures 4 inches (10 cm) round by 4 ¾ tall (11.5 cm)
• Leak-proof, easy-to-clean, hygienic, removable silicone gasket includes pull tab for easy opening.
• Etched bamboo lid topper features eel grass ocean motif.
• Easy-to-clean, hygienic removable silicone gasket.
• Collapsible stainless steel carrying handle.
• Threading inside the cap is steel - not plastic!
• Container base is dishwasher safe. Bamboo lid recommended only for hand washing.
• Tare weight etched on bottom of container for easy zero waste meal purchases at hot or cold food bars where charges are set by weight.
• Responsibly made in China.